An Inside Look at Men's Secret (and Not So Secret) Fears

Your guy may roll his eyes when you ask for the 100th time, "Does this make me look fat?" But the fact is, men have just as many fears, obsessions, and anxieties plaguing their psyches as we do. Here, a few bold men reveal what the guy in your life is probably too proud to share.

It's not just that I obsess about how much other people make. I mean, I do that too. I think about how I make more than Doug but not as much as Mike. And then I flip through my catalog of knowledge about Mike's life to find something that's not going well — he's not happy at work, his wife hates him, whatever — to try to make myself feel better. (And yes, we men realize we're being jerks when we think these things.) The reason men engage in this kind of mental smackdown with other men is pretty basic: Being dominant makes us more desirable, and money is a measure of dominance, or so we think. Every man who walks into the bar with a gold watch and 75-pound sterling cuff links is going to steal our woman away! That is why we bristle at him. (Also because he looks like an ostentatious jackass. That's another story.)

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But there's another kind of money mania that grips us. And that's the late-night calculations (which could also appear in the form of the early-morning calculations or the midday calculations, depending on what time of day a man happens to be prone to anxiety). I lie in bed while my wife is asleep and calculate how much money I have, how much I'd have to save to pay for a year of college for my possible future child, what the results of paying down some of the principal on my mortgage would be, how much my mutual funds will be worth in 10 years. I have actually attempted to perform compound interest calculations over 20-year periods without so much as a pencil or a scrap of paper or even a lightbulb burning overhead. That's the prehistoric brain at work: I must provide, I must be able to provide now, and I must be able to provide later. It doesn't matter how many times you tell us (or we tell ourselves) that the number of zeros in our net worth doesn't matter. In the dead of night, there are never enough zeros.

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The Obsession: "What's wrong with my lawn?"

By Jeff Pearlman

My lawn sucks, and it's driving me friggin' crazy. Huge potholes to the left. A whale-size brown spot to the right. Three years ago, I spent $200 at Home Depot on a new mower, then killed it when I ran over an aluminum baseball bat. Last year, I spent $800 — yes, $800 — on an Echo 5.5 HP Honda EZ Trim Self Propelled Mower. This mower was going to change my life, or at least help me wrestle my lawn into submission. It worked well for about three months, until I overfilled it with oil. Now it starts, gargles, sputters, coughs up black smoke, and dies.

"Get rid of it," says the wife.

"I can't," I reply.

"Why?" says the wife.

"Because it cost me $800," I reply.

"But it doesn't work," she says.

"Isn't Gossip Girl on?" I reply, hoping to distract her.

As a compromise, we hire a lawn guy for $150 per month — a perfectly nice man with nine fingers and an eternally exposed butt crack. Everything goes great until he uses contaminated soil to replenish our backyard. Within a matter of weeks, the grass is overtaken by long, winding yellowish weeds. My 4-year-old daughter names the weeds "Fred."

The wife finds this whole thing sort of funny. To her, the lawn's appearance means nothing. I, however, am heartbroken. Because here's what you need to know: A man's lawn represents who he is, what he's worth, how he thinks about himself. It's the face he presents to the world, or at least to the neighbors. If your lawn is ugly, you might as well wander the streets in a ripped undershirt with your pants falling down. Luckily for my wife, I haven't gone quite that crazy. Yet.

The Obsession: "Am I the best you've ever had?"

Have you ever wondered why the guy in bed with you is always so concerned with whether or not you, you know, get off? Why, if it's not happening, he'll continue diligently for the next three hours until either it happens or he collapses from exhaustion and needs to be administered intravenous fluids? We want you to think it's because we're selfless. That we really are just infinitely generous, happy pleasure administrators. But the truth is that we're getting off on your getting off. It's deeply sexually arousing for us when you're really aroused. For men, there's nothing sexier in a woman than awakened desire. We also have a deep-seated need to keep our mate committed to us, and pleasing her better than anyone else in the history of sex has ever pleased anyone would be a good way for us to do that.

And then, of course, as with everything male, there's the ego thing. You see, we've never been in the room while another man was having sex (most of us, anyway), so as far as we know, every single thing we do in the bedroom is a brilliant triumph of our singular imagination. Only I have thought to kiss the bend at the arm! Only I know that the ear is an erogenous zone! And it's awfully nice of you to allow us to keep the dream alive. — B.S.

The Fear: Will I get that old-guy gut?"

By Steve Friedman

Why do I spend so much time worrying about my gut? Because my nickname as a toddler was Butterball. Because I wore Husky brand jeans until sixth grade and believed my mother when she told me that Husky brand jeans were specially designed for little boys who were going to grow up to be football players, until that dark and terrible Thursday afternoon at recess when Harlan Bornstein, who not incidentally was skinny as well as mean, informed me that Husky pants were for fat kids.

Because I incline toward nervousness and melancholy and never found anything that could soothe and cheer me like a big bowl of ice cream. Because both my grandmothers liked to pat my face and tell me I was "a good eater" and then coo over me, even as I noticed the worried frown on my father's face. Because of the studies linking weight gain and waist size to things like stroke and heart attack, certainly, but really because I like women and am not stupid and am still a dreamer, and it doesn't take an expert in string theory or quantum mechanics to notice that Mary-Louise Parker and Laura Linney aren't romancing guys built like Jabba the Hutt. Because no matter how many times Dr. Phil (who could stand to hit the treadmill himself) and women say, "It's what's inside that counts," I suspect they're lying.

Because no matter how slim I get, trapped inside my sometimes toned and fit torso is the little boy in the Husky jeans. He worries and soothes himself with the occasional bowl of Chubby Hubby and then berates himself. He looks in the mirror and sees flab that isn't there. Part of him knows it isn't there. Part of him knows his vision is skewed. But here's the thing: He understands women's sometimes skewed vision about their own bodies. So when you ask him, "Does this make me look fat?" he may roll his eyes. But secretly, he knows how you feel.

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The Anxiety: "What's up with all this body hair?"

I think the world is conspiring to force me to wax my back. When I go to the gym, I see more and more hairless torsos. And I challenge you to name a single movie that features an actor with a hairy chest who is not either the comic relief or George Clooney. The message I'm getting: If you have hair on your body, you belong in a cave, wearing a shirt made out of woolly mammoth. And I think, When did they vote body hair off the island, and how come I didn't get to vote?

There is evidence that this wasn't always the case — Burt Reynolds, circa 1980, for example. Back then, men could strut around proud of their natural (hirsute) state. Today, not only are men under 30 willing to undergo painful procedures to change the way they look, they don't even feel self-conscious about it. But for those of us who grew up under the tutelage of real-er men than Ashton Kutcher, it still seems totally weird and feminine to wax anything other than a car. We imagine telling our pals that we shave or wax our chest, or our back, or our, you know, various out-of-the-way places, and we get embarrassed. That shame is enough to stop us from doing it. And yet we still worry about our body hair. Because the term "back hair" is synonymous with "gross." We may not want to be seen as vain, but last time I checked, men didn't want to be gross either. We don't want to be the guy at the pool whose furry coat sends children running in fear.

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Luckily, my wife claims she likes me just the way I am. Maybe she's just saying it because she knows I'd never wax anyway. But her flattery really helps me when I emerge come summertime, in a bathing suit, with maybe a little fur around the edges and maybe, just maybe, on my back too. — B.S.

The Anxiety: "Do I have what it takes to be a good dad?"

By Kevin Nealon

There are two types of dads: the men who are trying to live up to their own fathers, and the types who are trying to be the fathers their own dads weren't. I fall into the first category. My parents were both so great that before my son, Gable, was born, I was haunted by my own fears of inadequacy. Could I live up to the example my parents set? Could I be as good a father as my father was to me? Would I have his patience and compassion? Would I have my mother's optimism? Did I have what it took to raise a child?

You see, raising a child is the most important job that a man will ever have in life. Any decent father wants his child to be secure, confident, successful, and happy. How can you possibly be prepared to face a challenge like that?

But now that Gable is here, I think I'm a good dad. I don't think I'll ever be as good as my dad was to me in certain ways. My father knew how everything worked and why it worked — so I was worried that my kid would ask me questions and I wouldn't know the answers. But the thing is, children don't know anything, so they are easily impressed. Gable is 1½ now, and he's really impressed when I open and close a drawer. And if he ever asks me a question I don't know the answer to? I have Google.

For guys, there is no greater cause for paranoia than job performance. Unlike women, we don't spend time fretting over how the back of our hair looks. We don't waste our days wondering whether Cathy really likes me and whether she'll ever want to take our relationship to the next level (whatever the hell that means). And we usually don't gossip, unless it's about the Jets (who, by the way, could really use a new quarterback). But when it comes to work, we're Terminator cyborg killing machines. Why did that guy get promoted? He's two years younger than I am. He's stupid. I started at this firm when he was in high school.

To a man, the ultimate status symbol is not a car or a house or even a smokin' girlfriend. It's success on the job, handing out business cards reading "Vice President of So-and-so" while taking a handful of assistants for lunch at the hot new $50-per-head sushi joint. That's why, when it comes to work, men are scoundrels. (Not your husband, of course. But, ahem, the guys he knows.) We'll cheat to get ahead. We'll fix the books to exaggerate our accomplishments. And even though it's taboo to brag about salary well, to hell with taboo. I just got a $5,000 raise. Tonight, drinks are on me! — J.P.

The Obsession: "Am I still cool?"

By David Giffels

I really want to get a pair of those new-school skinny jeans, but I can't. I can't because they would make me look cool, or more accurately, they would make other people consider the possibility that I was trying to look cool, and that represents an entire undoing. Skinny jeans hide nothing.

It used to be that either you were cool (Errol Flynn) or you weren't (Errol Flynn's dad). But cool has gotten a little more complicated. For the first time in American history, there are no age or social barriers to coolness. A 41-year-old former Minutemen fan has exactly the same access to the hottest music websites as a 22-year-old Vampire Weekend fan. (Ditto for PlayStation 2 cheat codes, and skinny jeans, and so on.) So for a grown man, the lure to try to remain as cool as his younger self is strong. The trick, as supercool running back Jim Brown once said, is to act like you've been there before. And that is no small thing.

I just bought a new pair of Chuck Taylors (white, lo-top), and the only reason I was able to feel okay about doing this (especially with a preadolescent son skulking nearby, mortified at the prospect of Being Seen With His Dad In The Mall) is that I have always worn Chuck Taylors, ever since I was of an age when I was wearing them very specifically to try to look cool. Now I wear them to try to look like I'm not trying. Which is even harder to pull off.

One thing about cool has never changed: For most of us, being cool doesn't come naturally — and that's something we don't want anyone. Ever. To know. Therefore: If you notice us being cool, say nothing. If you notice us being uncool, please treat it like spinach in the teeth and tell us, very discreetly.

I pitied my friends when we were in our 20s and 30s, even early 40s. I pitied them because not only were they transforming into middle-aged drones before their time but because their resistance to their condition was so pitiful and so desperate. Their condition: thinning hair and receding hairlines. Their response: comb-overs, fancy haircuts, Rogaine, and thickening shampoo. Why couldn't they see that they weren't fooling anyone? Why didn't they realize that the measure of a man was not in how he was coiffed but in what he did, how he lived and loved? I didn't say any of that to the poor bastards, of course. They didn't need to hear pat philosophy from someone with a full head of hair. So I just nodded when they told me of their Rogaine use, or their distress over the expanding bald spot on the back of their skull. I nodded as I pitied them and gave a silent prayer of thanks for my genetic legacy.

Then, at 45, I noticed one night that my date, who I had assumed was staring, transfixed and charmed, into my devilishly charming but brooding and sincere eyes, was actually looking at something a couple of inches north. At home, in the bathroom, I stared into the mirror at the same spot. What had she been looking at? It's not like my hair was receding, or thinning, or...sweet mother of God!!!

The next few years were difficult. I'm man enough to admit that. I spent too much money — on baseball caps, on fancy haircuts, on dinners in dark restaurants. I tried to accept my condition gracefully. I reminded myself that it was how I lived and loved that defined who I was. I also stared at late-night ads for the Hair Replacement Club and went online to price hair plugs. I regretted that I had not yet married because now, surely, my chances of marrying were taking a big hit.

Why couldn't I accept my thinning hair? Because it doesn't look as good as non-thinning hair. And because I'm vain. It's that simple, and that embarrassing.

There was an epiphany, of course. Isn't there always? Mine came when I saw Bruce Willis playing a superhero in Unbreakable. He was manly and noble. He'd had a beautiful wife and then a string of hot girlfriends. And he was balding.

I'm balding now too. (I still have trouble saying the word "bald.") But I don't wear baseball caps. I strut into brightly lit rooms. I'm back to pitying the Rogaine users. I have made peace with myself. I define myself by how I live and love.

And occasionally, late at night, when I'm all alone, I surf the Net and price the latest in hair plugs. — S.F.

The Obsession: "How do I rank on Google?"

Every man I know looks for himself on the Internet. The younger ones do it on MySpace or Facebook, where you measure how many friends you have, who likes you and who doesn't. The older ones Google themselves. I know men who count how many pages they appear on, and then search their friends to see who has more. (If there's one thing men search for more than themselves on Google, it's their friends. And enemies.) The reason? Men want to see some evidence of themselves in the world. We want to see that we've made our mark. It's like the tree falling in the woods: If you win a 10K race, or get an award at work, and no one knows, does it really matter? Not nearly as much as it does if the results are searchable for all of humanity to see and acknowledge. — B.S.